argument from design

Line of reasoning, argued by English bishop William Paley 1794, that the universe is so complex that it can only have been designed by a superhuman power, and that we can learn something of it (God) by examining the world. The argument from design became popular with Protestant theologians in the 18th century as a means of accommodating the science of Isaac Newton. It was attacked by Scottish philosopher David Hume, among others.

Many versions of the argument exist, but all rely on the seeming pattern and order in the universe to take the view that it has a design or purpose (teleology). An alleged weakness in the argument is that it attempts a causal inference from the universe to God, when it only makes sense to speak of causal relations as holding between observable states of affairs.

The argument from design is one of four traditional arguments for the existence of God, the others being the cosmological argument, the moral argument, and the ontological argument.